Russia ready to contribute to new Asia-Pacific energy pattern

Energy ranks among the most important areas of future cooperation between Russia and the countries of Asia-Pacific region, President Vladimir Putin told the APEC Business Summit. He said that Russia was ready to contribute "to the building up of a new energy pattern in the Asia-Pacific region".
Forecasts show that the share of this region in global energy consumption is apt to grow by forty-5 % in the period of up to 2020, Putin stated. "The gap between its energy reserves and consumption is bound to grow, thereby aggravating the problem of its energy security," he stated.
"Russia is prepared to contribute to the stability of the market of energy resources on a long-term basis," the Russian leader stressed. "Our present-day deposits of petroleum and gas in the eastern parts of the country are sufficient not only to meet the domestic requirements, but also to make large-scale deliveries abroad," he stated.

Putin said that an agreement was signed a month ago to build a 2,400 km-long Russia-China oil pipeline by 2005. Russia will then deliver to China annually twenty mm tons of petroleum and this figure may eventually grow to 30 mm tons. Moreover, Gazprom is taking part in the tender to build a "East-West" gas pipeline in China. Work is under way on a project to supply China and Korea with gas from the Kovyktinsky deposit in the Irkutsk Region of Russia.
Oil and gas projects are being implemented on the Sakhalin shelf on production-sharing terms. The western partners of Russia are expected to build there the world's largest plant for the production of liquefied gas. Practically all the APEC nations may be supplied with it. "I presume that our APEC partners will find useful the rich experience of Russian companies in prospecting oil and gas, developing gas infrastructures, and in using new drilling methods," Putin stated.

The Russian leader believes that the energy bridges from Russia to Japan, Korea, and China could be component parts of the region's new energy pattern. "We regard in the same light the joint development of new reactor technologies and of the nuclear cycle of natural safety, projects to expand the uses of alternative sources of energy," Putin noted.
"Many of the initiatives I have mentioned require considerable or even huge financial means," the president stressed. "And, for this purpose, we expect cooperation both from financial centres in Europe and the United States, which are traditional for us, and from the Asian bank community. I believe that there shall be enough work for us to do in the energy sector throughout the next one hundred years," President Putin noted.